Description of the Background Art
The present state of the art has seen the development of toy vehicles that can provide responses to operator direction or commands. U.S. Pat. No. 6,568,983 issued to Peters, for example, discloses a toy vehicle in which forward progress may be controlled by means of an onboard video camera. U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,148 issued to Konno discloses a toy vehicle in which change in vehicle direction is effected by means of an infrared signal transmitted to the toy vehicle. U.S. Pat. No. 4,086,724 issued to McCaslin discloses a toy vehicle in which vehicle direction can be controlled by an external command, such as a voice command or a light from an external source. U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,575 issued to Rosenthal discloses a toy vehicle operated in response to a beam of colored control light from a handheld controller. U.S. Pat. No. 4,925,424 issued to Takahashi discloses a toy vehicle adapted to run on a track using a pattern detection unit to vary the speed and direction of the toy vehicle.
However, such toy vehicles are sensitive to signals of, at most, only a single color present on an action surface or sent by an operator. This design feature results in the toy vehicle having a limited number of responsive actions, such as merely following a predetermined track or path, or performing a single physical movement, for example. What is needed is a method and system for providing a greater number of predictable or random actions from a mobile toy, such as may be produced in response to the discrimination of a plurality of colors detected on a play surface.